Why I Am Taking This Class

When I was young, my uncle bought a new house and in the basement was a wine cellar. Walking down the stairs for the first time and seeing it is still a vivid memory for me years later. Looking at the rows and cases of wine was the first time I can remember where I realized the both the prominence of wine in our culture and how varied a form wine can take. Whereas I at first thought that wine was just something you drank with dinner (like orange juice or Coca-Cola, the only references my 10-year-old mind had to compare against), now there were vintages, varietals, vineyards, and regions. The world of wine seemed much bigger.

Years later, I read The Billionaire's Vinegar, by Benjamin Wallace, and my understanding of wine culture became more complex. I had learned that wine was something to be studied, collected, and appreciated from my experience with my uncle but here was a story of a single bottle of wine being sold for $156,000 at auction. Whether the wine turned out to be a forgery or not was beside the point. The fact that there was a market and demand for wine that could create these kind of prices was mind-blowing to me. I came to realize that wine was not just a niche product but big business.

I'm now very excited to take this class to coalesce what I have learned about wine here and there unintentionally and largely through osmosis. I appreciate wine but believe this class can help begin to formalize my education in it. From what I can tell, there is a large shift in the spending habits of global economies (e.g. the middle class in China) and in the beverage/recreational market (e.g. craft beer, small batch spirits, legalized cannabis) and I am looking forward to learning how the complex wine market (both production and distribution) of today will respond.